In the 1800s, the Irish were New York City’s “ghetto thugs” and unwelcome “illegal aliens” (ugly words), much the way we think of people of color today. When they were required to defend the North in the Civil War, to risk life and limb for black slaves that most considered subhuman, well, that just added insult to injury. Irish and other impoverished immigrant males in New York City started the Draft Riots in the 1860s to protest. During that time, the New York police force was heavily populated by Irish. By the end of the 19th century, 70% of the New York police force wereRead More →

If you reject the idea of white privilege, please move on, because you will find nothing here to suit your purpose. The flurries of “criming while white” stories merely scratch the surface of illustrating white privilege. These stories just point out a double standard. They don’t show much beneath the surface about the structural racism that support double standards. Consequently, when the hashtags stop trending, our country faces the sad possibility of a memory wipe. White people have the luxury of forgetting. That’s white privilege, the privilege of forgetting and obliviousness. Profiling and police brutality, as overt examples of racial injustice, are tangible and concrete things. AlthoughRead More →

Breast cancer runs in my family, discussed by us for many years only in Southern whispers and associated with deep remorse. It also runs among close friends, whose families are less reserved, but who struggle with deep grief. My family whispers about breast cancer are oxymoronic given the number of books about the women’s health movement that line my bookcases. The women’s health movement ferrets out myths that mainstream science perpetuates about women’s bodies. Sometimes, even today, it’s still hard to distinguish “fact from fiction” in mainstream science without a copy of Our Bodies and Ourselves, though. Is it true that childlessness causes women soRead More →

1. Index cards to keep track of things I have to do. 2. Colored pens that make lists exciting even though lists of things to do are boring. 3. Chobani Greek yogurt because it’s protein rich even though it tastes like goats. 4. The neat “how to gmail something in the future” app I just found. 5. Fuchsia and the WordPress spellchecker that helped me spell the color correctly. ∞Read More →

The latest viral police profiling confrontation is a black man, Brandon McKean, getting stopped by a Michigan cop for walking with his hands in his pockets in freezing cold weather. McKean’s video adds another example to the multitude of stories that are coming to white people’s attention about how police profile, harass, and brutalize people of color. What’s different in this case is that the police department defended itself with a counter-video on Facebook, demonstrating that McKean edited his version to make himself appear in a good light.The introduction of new media technology, which started changing the game with videos and Rodney King in 1992,Read More →